(Newser)
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The supercarrier once hailed as the "biggest ship ever built" is headed to the gallows. The USS Forrestal has the honors—both dubious and not—of being the Navy's first supercarrier, and being unloaded, in October, for the grand price of one cent. That's what the Navy paid All Star Metals to scrap and recycle the 1,067-foot ship, a process that got under way last week.

Fox News reports that the Forrestal, launched in 1954 and decommissioned in 1993, left Philadelphia's Navy Yard Tuesday morning and was towed down the Delaware River. From there, it will travel along the East Coast to Brownsville, Texas, in a journey expected to take 17 days. "Today, most people look at it as 60,000 tons of scrap metal, which it isn't," a 74-year-old who served on the ship in the early 1960s told the Philadelphia Inquirer as it departed. "It's 60,000 tons of history." Read up on that colorful history here. (Read more USS Forrestal stories.)

It could have been offered at nominal cost to a close ally -- Australia, for example, which is feeling pressure from China's push into its sphere of interest. Or, it could have been refitted as municipal office space, or low income housing, or a medical facility. Seems a waste, to cut it up for scrap.

StevenBird

Feb 11, 2014 2:52 AM CST

Too bad they couldn't keep it as a floating Naval museum.

dwatson

Feb 10, 2014 7:57 PM CST

I can still remember the sounds and smells of the FID. What a great ship and crew.